Hi all! I have been a long time listener to the podcast and started using TrainerRoad last year. Currently I’m in SSB low volume I and REALLY don’t want to have to take a lot of time off from this training plan just because life is happening
I am starting a new job next week and for the first 4-8 weeks I will be traveling to other offices to get familiarized with how things run before my home office opens. During that time I will be gone Sunday night through Thursday night. The company is flying me and putting me up in a hotel for these time periods. (Therefore bringing my bike is not going to happen since it’s the company’s dime.)
My question is this, would it be better to push all my TrainerRoad workouts to Friday, Saturday and Sunday or approximate my scheduled workouts during the week while I am gone? There will be hotel gyms available but I don’t know yet if there will be bikes. I don’t have a portable power meter such as a pedal-based system like Garmin Vector or Powertap P1.
I have listened to the podcast that was done about a year ago on this topic where @Nate_Pearson shared his best tips for training while traveling. However, they involved portable power meters or bringing his bike with him, neither of which are viable options for me. Any other thoughts on how best to handle this temporary situation?
I think it would be better to try to approximate your workouts while you’re gone - pushing them all to Friday-Sunday would be too much training load back-to-back. If you can schedule your workouts so the most intense/technical one is done while you’re home on the trainer, you can probably get away with estimating your effort based off RPE or heart rate on gym bikes for the workouts you do while you’re gone.
I travel a fair amount with my job and I’m currently away from home Monday to Thursday. Key for me is finding a hotel near or with a gym with a Wattbike. Then you can do workouts before or after being in the office. Bit of chat, charm, cheek with the gym manager is often needed to avoid having to sign up / pay for long term gym memberships…
I do a fair amount of driving for work and often have a Kickr and bike in my car with me which I setup in a hotel.
When flying you can get a relatively cheap folding bike and a travel trainer (really worth it for road warrior types) that will be carry-on safe with no issues but you need an understanding boss to approve the expenses (until you get enough airline status that it costs you nothing).
Steady state workouts like sweet spot are fairly easy to do on even the cheapest of bikes. Bring a HR monitor and a way to record it accurately and you’ll be able to do those long ‘easy’ workouts
I travel a lot for work. When my hotels don’t have good equipment, I train with heart rate, focusing on long sessions (1.5-2hrs) at 130-140bpm (YMMV). This is equivalent to 60-65% IF, which I then record manually or with a fitness watch. I then do all my complex interval work once back at home.
